The Atlas
Tonewood Atlas is a live index of what the boutique acoustic world has on its shelves right now, gathered from independent dealers and normalised into one vocabulary. This page is the key to how we read wood — every classification choice, shown.
2,978 listings · 186 dealer codes · 88 species · 21 families, live today
The Wood Key
Taxus baccata, European yew, native from the Azores and northwest Africa across Europe to the Caucasus and northern Iran; a thin band of pale yellow or tan sapwood runs hard against an orangish brown heartwood, sometimes darker brown or purplish and darkening further with age — that abrupt light-against-dark boundary is the wood's signature, and knots and irregular grain are common.
Where it sits
backs and sides
2 on the soundbox · 2 builders
How dealers write it
English Yew · Yew
How it files
Who’s building with it
Not CITES-listedchecked, not merely absent · as of 2026-08-09
Read from Commission Regulation (EU) 2026/1383, cross-checked against the USDA APHIS CITES Timber Species Manual — the document. We do not give legal advice and have not checked any individual instrument’s paperwork: this species carries this status on this date. Ask the dealer about documentation.
